The Legacy
by MSquared79
Summary: **SPOILERS FOR "THE FORCE AWAKENS".** In her grief, Leia is comforted by the least likely person. This is another part of an overarching story I'm working on, bookending "The Force Awakens".


She felt it, sudden, violent. She tried to stay on her feet, but the weight of it was too much for her to bear. Silently, with no one seeming to notice, she fell to the ground. In the pain that she felt, she would at least not show it on her face. No tears would fall. At least, not until she was alone.

Leia looked around at the celebrations that followed confirmation of the destruction of the Starkiller base. She wanted to join in, but her heart wasn't in it. It was too sorrowful with the knowledge that Han wouldn't be coming back with the battle squadrons. So she made her way back to her quarters. It was only there that she allowed her emotions to come to the surface.

The tears fell, hot and fast. Her chest heaved, her eyes were wet, her heart broken. She wanted to curse her son. She knew it was he who had killed his father. She wanted to curse her father. He had been the dark seed from which the diseased tree had grown. But in the end, she couldn't do do either.

She wanted to be comforted. First, by Bail Organa. He had been dead over thirty years, but he was still the one who inspired her every day. Then by her mother, Padme. She had the strength to love a man through the most vile darkness. She wanted her brother here with her. Luke was the only one who understood how much she had loved Han, because he loved Han too.

Yet when she felt the hand on her shoulder, it was her father, the patriarch of this damned dark legacy, that was there. She wanted to shout at him, berate him, but in the end, she accepted his comfort, spectral though it may be. She shed more tears under his watchful gaze.

"I am so sorry for your lose, my daugher," Anakin Skywalker said. His youthful face, not yet scarred by the battle with Obi-Wan Kenobi, regarded her with uncertainty.

But she surprised the both of them when she replied, "What do you have to apologize for? It wasn't you who killed Han."

"But you were ready to blame me. I am, after all, the one Ben beseeched for help in fighting the light." Her father was right, of course. It had been the second thought, at least.

"He called to you?" His words dawned on her. It had been Ben's oddity since he was a boy. Luke, Leia and Han had told him about his grandfather, about the history they had discovered after the war, about their own experiences with the man he had become and it had become Ben's obsession.

Anakin nodded. "He wants to finish what I began, all those years ago." Ethereal shoulders shrugged.

Leia shook her head. "We could never get through to him what you were. He only thought of you as Darth Vader. We tried to teach him that, in the end, you were the prophesied one, the one who did indeed bring balance to the Force." She looked skyward.

"And he never listened," Anakin replied simply.

Leia let out a humorless laugh. "No, he was always stubborn like that."

Her father's right eyebrow lifted. "Wherever did he get it, I wonder?"

She gazed at the man who was her father. It had taken a long time, but she had come to be at peace with him. The more she learned about Anakin Skywalker, the more she understood him. Oh, she still hadn't forgiven his crimes as Darth Vader, but she accepted the man, as he was now before her, as her father. As Luke knew she would. "You have that same glint in your eye," she told him.

Anakin looked pensive. "I have watched over you and your brother for a long time, but I don't think he has a glint."

"Not Luke," she corrected him. When her father's look pressed her for a further answer, she shrugged her shoulder. "Let's just say, I married a man like my father."

Anakin let out a laugh as he realized it and acknowledged it. "Well, it took a lot to convince your mother, as it took Han a lot with you." Then he grew silent. "Maybe they were right, in the end. The Jedi, about attachments. I could never let go...of my mother, of Padme. It drove me to seek out the path, to protect me from not being alone."

Leia and Luke had learned much about their father and it was part of that knowledge she wanted to pass on now. "You were manipulated. Palpatine sought out a fresh mind and there you were."

Her words did little to comfort him. "But I still took the actions. I was an easy target for him, and stepped up to it when the time came," he answered, not allowing her to assuage him.

She wanted to fight him on the subject, but accepted his guilt.

They sat in silence for a few moments, until she asked him, "Did you know she was dead?" Leia did not need to say the name.

"The Emperor told me...told me that I had killed her," he replied, looked down at his hands. He couldn't bare to look at his daughter now.

"You didn't," she informed him. "She recovered from…"

"From my attack?" Anakin stated sharply. "She still died. She still could not bare what I had done, what I had become, to stay alive for her children." As he said that, his essence began to fade. He took a calming breath, and he was more solid again. "I did come here for more than trying to offer you comfort."

"You have done that," she told him. It was true. His presence was helping her more than she realized, even as it was she who was trying to soothe the torment that was welling up in him.

He offered her a smile. "Your mother cannot be here now, as much as she would want to." Leia understood him. Padme had not been Force-sensitive and Leia was not trained enough to bridge any gap. Luke could, but he wasn't here. "In any case, she has been able to to help someone else."

Leia mouth parted, as she understood what he was saying. "Han…" her voice trailed off.

Anakin nodded. "She is giving him the help he needs now. They've been having some interesting chats, actually." Leia was too stunned to answer him, so he continued. "Han has the same belief about Ben that your brother had about me."

Leia closed her mouth and set her jaw. "How...how could he? After what happened...after Ben _killed_ him!"

"Because, as there was a difference between Anakin and Vader, so too is there a difference between Ben and Kylo. Where I was tempted by the darkness, Ben is sensing the light. That is why he calls to me. He is trying to fight it, because it is still in there."

Leia once had that faith in her son, that there was still a chance for the light. But it felt as though it had died as Han was dying. Could there still be a chance?

She must have said that out loud, because her father answer the question. "Just as Luke saved me, there is one who can save your son."

"Who?"

Anakin shook his head. "You will know the person when you see them. They have a long path to go, but there is still a chance they can save him." He was beginning to disincorporate again, but there was one more thing to be said. "Han has a message for you." Leia had a sense of what that message was, but waited for the apparition to deliver it. "Han wants you to know that he loves you."

Leia closed her eyes, feeling the love of her husband even though he was not there. She opened them, a genuine smile on her face for the first time in a long time. Nodding her head, she replied, "Father, tell him, I know."

That said, the space where Anakin's spirit had been was empty once again. At that moment, she heard the sound of ships landing, and she made her way out to the spaceport. X-wings, Y-wings, and support vehicles streaked through the sky above, as one vessel in particular caught her eyes. She steeled herself, knowing what was to come once the landing hatch opened.

The only disappointment she experienced was the confirmation of Han's death. It was silently acknowledged as Chewbacca appeared, carrying the body of the former stormtrooper to an awaiting medbed. She was about to go to him as he completed his task, until a girl caught her eye. A young woman, really, with features that were familiar to her. She had the same dark eyes, the same colored hair, as generations of the women in Leia's family had. She knew who this was immediately, as he father's words came back to her.

Leia approached the other woman, wordlessly, sensing through the Force the pain this person was in. She gathered her in her arms and they embraced, sharing the burden of their grief. They stayed like that for what felt like an infinity, as Leia's thoughts flew elsewhere. Strangely, they did not linger on what she had lost. Han's death still weighed on her. She suspected it always would, just as her mother's death hung over her father, even as they were together again. Instead, she gratefully accepted what she had regained.

The path to redemption had been reset, Leia knew. In time, the balance her father had achieved with his death would return. She prayed silently that it would not cost her son his life as well.


End file.
